Bhiwandi: Playing with fire

The Bhiwandi logistics hub is a key growth engine for Mumbai and yet its fire safety measures are alarmingly absent – 30,000 warehouses and not a single fire station. Find out just how vulnerable it is

THANE: When a fire breaks out in Bhiwandi’s sprawling logistics hub, the response hinges on a roll of the dice – a call goes out to the three nearest municipal corporations and whichever one is closest to the blaze dispatches its fire tenders. This ad-hoc system exists because the hub – home to more than 30,000 warehouses stocked with everything from everyday items to flammable products – lacks a fire station of its own.

Kalyan,india-December 26 2024 : Pic: Loom-ing change of Bhiwandi.. godown is suffering from lack of infrastructure facilities Pics of Anamika Gharat Pic.On Thursday .in India on 26 2024 - Story By Anamika Gharat (Photo by Pramod Tambe)

On Tuesday, the logistics hub, on the outskirts on Mumbai, was ravaged by a second major fire in as many months. It is the nerve centre of e-commerce for millions in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and yet this key driver of Mumbai’s economy is riddled with fire safety lapses.

In an uncanny similarity to Tuesday’s blaze, three warehouses at the RK Logistics Warehouse complex, also near Yewei village, went up in flames in December last year. All three warehouses stored cosmetics, while the ones that burnt down in Tuesday’s fire stored perfumes. There were no casualties but the losses would have been minimised had there been a fire station nearby, say local officials.

According to fire officials, “The warehouses fall under the jurisdiction of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), which grants fire safety permissions. However, due to inadequate site inspections and negligence by godown owners, there are frequent fires at the logistics complex.”

Emergency Call

Over the last three decades, Bhiwandi has evolved into a major warehousing hub, housing nearly 30,000 godowns across Thane-Padgha (35km) and Thane-Kaman-Vasai (30km), employing around 17 lakh workers. Local officials estimate the actual number could be 60,000 due to unregistered facilities. Despite its pivotal role in the supply chain for Indian and global companies, the region faces challenges like illegal godowns, regulatory hurdles, poor road infrastructure and unregulated growth, which have turned this critical logistics hub into a virtual tinder box.

The logistics hub falls under two jurisdictions – Bhiwandi rural and Bhiwandi city, with 90 per cent of warehouses located in the former. Since the local gram panchayat does not have fire-fighting facilities, when there is a fire, an emergency call is made to the three nearest municipal corporations – in Kalyan-Dombivali, Thane and Bhiwandi city. The fire station closest to the blaze sends out fire tenders.

According to fire officers, it takes at least 30-45 minutes for fire tenders to reach a site outside the Bhiwandi-Nizampur Municipal Corporation’s jurisdiction due to poor roads and traffic congestion. “We have nine vehicles and only 45 firemen to cover a 70km area. Some days, it can take over an hour to cover just 2km due to traffic congestion,” said Rajesh Pawar, chief fire officer.

Fire experts said the warehouses are expected to have firefighting measures in place – high-pressure water sprinklers, chemical foggers and adequate water storage within godowns to bring a blaze under control. However, a large number of warehouses here do not have functional fire systems.

Sainath Tare, chairperson, Bhiwandi Warehouse Builder and Developers Association, said, “We contribute significantly to the economy, with godowns paying ₹55,000 crore in GST during the pandemic alone. Our warehouses distribute goods, parcels and medicines across Mumbai and beyond. Yet, poor infrastructure and lack of government support hinder our operations.”

To address the issues of a growing Bhiwandi, the state government back in 2007, had appointed MMRDA as the Special Planning Authority to develop 60 villages outside the Bhiwandi-Nizampur Municipal Corporation limits.

“As part of our development plan, 15 fire stations are proposed, one of which is nearing completion at Upper Thane. Work on the remaining ones is in various stages,” said an official from MMRDA.

With no fire station in sight for the logistics hub, Tare said, “Using our own funds, we plan to create a large-scale firefighting system that can cover a radius of 100km. With the help of discarded water from the BMC purification plant, we can effectively control fires and improve response time.”

Durraj Kamankar, who heads a consulting engineering firm and the man behind designing Amazon’s first warehouse in India, in Bhiwandi, said safety lapses were numerous. “You will find a flaw or rule breached or government authorities turning a blind eye to the way these warehouses are either built or being run. These plots used to be simple godowns used for storage purposes that have turned into full-fledged warehouses. The owners or developers of these spaces rent them to third-party logistics companies who then sub-let them. In eventualities such as fires, owners of the plot are clueless to how and why it happened,” said Kamankar, also a Bhiwandi resident, who over the years has transformed many of the region’s cement-tin godowns into state-of-the-art warehouses for global companies.